Shocking Bestseller:The original version of this astonishing tell-all book spent 73 weeks on theNew York Timesbestseller list, has sold more than 1.25 million copies, and has been translated into 32 languages. New Revelations:Featuring 15 explosive new chapters, this expanded edition of... More Description

Shocking Bestseller:The original version of this astonishing tell-all book spent 73 weeks on theNew York Timesbestseller list, has sold more than 1.25 million copies, and has been translated into 32 languages.

New Revelations:Featuring 15 explosive new chapters, this expanded edition of Perkins's classic bestseller brings the story of economic hit men (EHMs) up to date and, chillingly, home to the US. Over40 percent of the book is new, including chapters identifying today's EHMs and a detailed chronology extensively documenting EHM activity since the first edition was published in 2004.

Former economic hit man John Perkins shares new details about the ways he and others cheated countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Then he reveals how the deadly EHM cancer he helped create has spread far more widely and deeply than ever in the US and everywhere else--to become the dominant system of business, government, and society today. Finally, he gives an insider view of what we each can do to change it.

Economic hit men are the shock troops of what Perkins calls the corporatocracy, a vast network of corporations, banks, colluding governments, and the rich and powerful people tied to them. If the EHMs can't maintain the corrupt status quo through nonviolent coercion, the jackal assassins swoop in. The heart of this book is a completely new section, over 100 pages long, that exposes the fact that all the EHM and jackal tools--false economics, false promises, threats, bribes, extortion, debt, deception, coups, assassinations, unbridled military power--are used around the world today exponentially more than during the era Perkins exposed over a decade ago.

The material in this new section ranges from the Seychelles, Honduras, Ecuador, and Libya to Turkey, Western Europe, Vietnam, China, and, in perhaps the most unexpected and sinister development, the United States, where the new EHMs--bankers, lobbyists, corporate executives, and others--"con governments and the public into submitting to policies that make the rich richer and the poor poorer."

But as dark as the story gets, this reformed EHM also provides hope. Perkins offers a detailed list of specific actions each of us can take to transform what he calls a failing Death Economy into a Life Economy that provides sustainable abundance for all.

John Perkins was born on January 28, 1945 in Hanover, New Hampshire. He attended Brown University, and Boston University School of Management during the 1960s. His best-known book is Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2004), an insider's account of the exploitation or neo-colonization of Third World countries by what Perkins describes as a cabal of corporations, banks, and the United States government.

His 2007 book, The Secret History of the American Empire, provides more evidence of the negative impact of global corporations on the economies and ecologies of poor countries, as well as offering suggestions for making corporations behave more like good citizens.

Since the late 1980's he has been heavily involved with non-profit organizations in Ecuador and around the world.